The mental models that people have of robots, and the sources from which they build these models, can have different implications for what expectations and desires people have of robots. For example, the science fiction and media-based robots that people referenced, namely C3P0 and Rosie, both have high levels of social capability. They are also both humanoid, and the way that they complete tasks are often similar to how we might expect a human to, given the constraints and advantages offered by human morphology. Humanoid morphologies have been shown to create a greater expectation for social competency, and people assume that humanoid robots will be deployed in jobs that involve interacting with people [1]}. Morphologies aside, media in particular has heightened people's expectations of robots in general [2]}. In contrast, the robots of today with which some participants had actually encountered are highly task-based, non-humanoid, and have no social skills (i.e., a vacuum cleaning robot or a bottle-crushing robot). Even robots that are sometimes found in retail which are meant to greet customers present only a facade of social competency [3]}. A person who expects to have Rosie-level interactions with one of those retail robots will either be disappointed or deceived by the social fluff that is presented as actual mental models of human interactants [4]}.
